Leveson, the police and a gag on whistleblowers that threatens democracy

The first that Chief Superin-tendent Andy Rowell would have known of his imminent arrest would have been a hammering on the door of his Wiltshire home last Thursday at 6am.

Still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Chief Supt Rowell, an officer with 29 years of experience and currently commander in the London Borough of Ealing, would have been cautioned and informed that he was being arrested on suspicion of ‘misfeasance in public office’ as part of Operation Elveden, the on-going police inquiry into illegal or inappropriate payments to police officers by journalists in exchange for confidential information.

Now, we don’t have any details about the nature of the information he is alleged to have passed to a News International reporter. But we do know one thing — no money changed hands. The Metropolitan Police have already made that clear.

Andy Rowell was the 61st person to be detained as part of Operation Elveden and the 107th to be arrested in total under the parallel police investigations that have got under way since the phone-hacking scandal broke

And yet Andy Rowell was still arrested, becoming the 61st person to be detained as part of Operation Elveden and the 107th to be arrested in total under the parallel police investigations that have got under way since the original phone-hacking scandal broke.

Of those 107, so far only one person has been convicted, while 73 have been released on police bail, some of them for a period now approaching 18 months.

As a former police officer of 30 years standing and now a recently elected Police and Crime Commissioner with a duty to serve those who voted for me in Surrey, I care passionately both about good police work and Press freedom.

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So I find the latest arrest alarming, particularly because no money, no corrupt payment, was apparently involved.

Now I’m not going to get bogged down in the right and wrongs of an individual case — there may still turn out to be good reasons why Rowell has been arrested.

Yet the clandestine passing of information to the Press by concerned whistleblowers is one of the main ways that significant wrong-doings, particularly in the public sector, become widely known.

Exposed: Without whistleblowers, we would never have known about the terrible shortcomings in patient care in some NHS hospitals

Without whistleblowers, for example, we’d never have known that MPs had been abusing their expenses. Without whistleblowers, we’d never have known about the lack of adequate kit for our soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Without whistleblowers, we’d never have known about the terrible shortcomings in patient care in some NHS hospitals or the special deals that the Inland Revenue struck with certain multi-national companies to save them hundreds of millions of pounds in corporation tax.

Nor is there any doubt that without whistleblowers, certain wrong-doings by the police themselves would never have come to light either.

The appalling failings in the original investigation into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, for example, only came to light because concerned junior police officers chose to expose them, initially by way of informal conversations with certain journalists.

As a result of those conversations, the Daily Mail then campaigned for years to successfully put Stephen’s racist killers where they should have been many years earlier — behind bars.

If some of his concerned colleagues hadn't spoken informally to the Press about the way the now disgraced police officer Ali Dizaei did things, he might be running the Met by now

Something very similar happened with the now disgraced police officer, Ali Dizaei, the former Metropolitan Police Commander who was eventually jailed — twice — for perverting the course of justice.

Again, if some of his concerned colleagues hadn’t spoken informally to the Press about the way Dizaei did things, he might be running the Met by now.

Would those same individuals be so brave now in the current climate of fear? I very much doubt it.

Please don’t get me wrong. I laud much of the work that Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into phone hacking achieved, just as I condemn anyone involved who broke the law, particularly those who hacked the phones of victims of crime, like the family of murdered teenager Millie Dowler.

Any police officer who sells information to journalists deserves to go to prison. That is corrupt behaviour, the ‘misfeasance of public office’ as the legal jargon has it. Our approach must be one of zero tolerance.

But if the information is passed to the Press not for money but by a desire to expose wrong-doing, I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Indeed, as someone who believes that a strong liberal democracy should be held to account, I welcome it — even if it does make life uncomfortable for those of us in positions of power.

Right now, however, that whistleblowing tradition, which marches hand-in-glove with the idea of a free Press, is threatened like never before.

As the Government vacillates over imposing statutory regulation of the Press, we seem to be sleep-walking towards a situation of quasi-regulation: a Press regulated if not directly by the police then, certainly, indirectly by fear of the police.

Those who have campaigned so vociferously for statutory control of the Press, should be very careful of what they wish for.

No whistleblower, however brave, wants to be carted off to a police station at dawn, their house searched, their personal possessions — and those of their family — rifled through by strangers.

With more than 100 people arrested since Operations Elveden, Weeting and Tuleta got under way, the fear of arrest is already affecting relations between the police and the Press

At the moment it is police officers and journalists (57 of the latter at the latest count) who are being arrested — the journalists on suspicion of aiding and abetting misfeasance in public office.

But who might be next? Where will it stop?

It could be anyone working in the public sector, anywhere from Customs and Excise to the Ministry of Defence. It could be a nurse horrified by the death rate at her hospital; it could be a teacher concerned about how schools are manipulating their league table positions; it could be a scientist gravely worried about the safety record of a new nuclear reactor.

Will they still speak out now, knowing they risk arrest at dawn? If they don’t speak out, investigative journalism, the painstaking process by which so many of the biggest public sector scandals have been exposed, will not be possible.

Looking ahead: Lord Leveson would like all conversations between police and reporters logged

This is Britain, the birthplace of parliamentary democracy, for goodness sake — not Stalinist Russia. We’re supposed to have a robust democracy, where government (national and local) and public sector organisations are held to account.

Any public criticism may not be very pleasant at the time — as anyone, like myself, who was in the Met when it was described as ‘institutionally racist’ by the Macpherson Inquiry will attest — but the nation’s institutions emerge stronger and better as a direct result.

But if we frighten away the few people brave enough to expose wrong-doing in the organisations they work for, if the fear of arrest stops them from quietly contacting the media, then I really do worry about the sort of society we might all too quickly become.

The great danger is we’d end up a society where what appears in the media is controlled not by skilled reporters and editors but by politicians, the police and those who employ them.

Almost unwittingly, we’ve stumbled further along this perilous road than many realise.

With more than 100 people arrested since Operations Elveden (into illegal payments by journalists to the police), Weeting (illegal phone-hacking) and Tuleta (illegal computer hacking) got under way, but with only a handful charged and just one convicted, the fear of arrest is already affecting relations between the police and the Press.

Lord Leveson would like all conversations between police and reporters logged, and there have already been suggestions that any officers worried about wrong-doing within the police should contact not the papers, but a specially set up police hotline.

If the ramifications of such a suggestion were not so serious, you’d laugh.

By and large, this country’s public services are excellent, thanks to the superb people who work for them. But no big organisation always gets it 100 per cent right and there’s nearly always one bad apple.

Thankfully, whistleblowers call these organisations and their rogue staff to account. But they will continue to expose this wrong-doing only if they are confident they are doing the right thing, not, like Chief Superintendent Andy Rowell, terrified of an early morning arrest.

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Leveson, the police and a gag on whistleblowers that threatens democracy